


Five Seconds

by Laelior



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/F, Flashbacks, Life flashing before the eyes, Slight changes to canon, Spoilers, sara is a smartass
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 13:49:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11487666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laelior/pseuds/Laelior
Summary: (Containsmajorspoilers for the quest "Hunting the Archon")Suvi had kissed her good-bye and told her to stay safe and come back in one piece. Sara was pretty sure this whole insane idea violated the “stay safe” part of that edict, but when the alternative was not going back to her at all….“Alright SAM,” Sara said, quickly before she could think too much about it. “Let’s do it.” She hoped Suvi wasn’t listening in on her SAM feed, hoped that the scientist was safe in the bubble of protection the Tempest offered.





	Five Seconds

**Author's Note:**

> When SAM stops her heart, Sara's life flashes before her eyes.
> 
> Slight tweaks made to in-game dialog and timeline.

The first time Sara Ryder died, she died in pain, choking on the argon-nitrogen atmosphere of Habitat 7 while her father held her and willingly gave his life for hers.

The second time she died, it was painless and quick, almost like falling asleep on her feet.

It seemed like an impossible situation. The Archon had made it clear he would show no mercy in extracting any and all knowledge of the Remnant from her, along with SAM. She was trapped in a field attuned to her own bioelectric energy, and the biological transmitter the Archon had forced into her body would inevitably unravel the AI’s technology. So when SAM suggesting stopping her heart to disrupt the field, it _almost_ seemed like a sane idea.

Almost.

“Are there any other options?” She asked, even though she already knew what the AI’s answer would be.

“None that I can determine,” came the mechanical reply.

Sara looked down at the field of orange energy that bound her hands, trying to keep the creeping sense of panic at bay.

Suvi had kissed her good-bye and told her to stay safe and come back in one piece. Sara was pretty sure this whole insane idea violated the “stay safe” part of that edict, but when the alternative was not going back to her at all….

She could still feel the warmth of the red-haired scientist’s lips on hers, remembered the way she’d held on to her just a little longer than necessary before setting out. She could hear the way Suvi’s voice was as calm as always except for the little catch in it when she’d asked Sara to come back to her. She thought of her brother, still lying in a coma in the Hyperion’s cryo bay, who she didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to before haring off on this mission.

“Alright SAM,” Sara said, quickly before she could think too much about it. “Let’s do it.” She hoped Suvi wasn’t listening in on her SAM feed, hoped that the scientist was safe in the bubble of protection the Tempest offered.

“Not again.....” Cora’s voice sounded strained, but didn’t offer any further objections.

“It’s a bad idea, SAM,” Liam said. But what could he do? He was just as tied up as she was.

“If this goes wrong….” Sara licked her lips, wishing she could could turn her head far enough to see Liam and and Cora behind her, to make eye contact with another being quite possibly for the last time. “If this goes wrong, I’m going to want a big, sappy funeral. Lots of mourners. And something really ironic on my tombstone. I’m counting on you guys to come up with a good one.”

She paused, then added, “Don’t tell them I was killed by the AI in my head, alright?”

“Stopping your heart...now,” SAM said in his typical dispoassionate tones.

And then the world went blank as her body crumpled unimpressively to the floor.

Here lies Sara Ryder, died out in the ass end of nowhere. If she didn’t survive this, she didn’t know who would kill her first: Suvi or Scott.  


* * *

 

 

_She was weightless, floating._

_She felt nothing, no pain, no sadness, no fear. It was like looking over her own body from a distance._

_“SAM?” Cora’s voice sounded tinny, like she was hearing it from far away or over a bad comm connection._

_“Attempting to resuscitate,” SAM said._

_But there was nothing._

_Then._

_Pain._

_Bright flashes._

_Her mother._

_Her father._

_Scott._

_Suvi._

_Her friends, her crew, the family she’d chosen here in Andromeda._

_It all flashed before her, flooding her mind with the memories of the days she’d been alive, been with her family._

_If this was her life flashing before her eyes, it really kinda sucked._

 

* * *

 

Just an hour into her mother’s memorial service, Sara had lost count of the number of military uniforms in attendance. Alec Ryder may have been an Alliance pariah, kicked out and shunned for his work on AI development, but Ellen had been anything but. She and Scott were in their Alliance uniforms, too, with the standard black mourning badges around their left sleeves. They almost felt like camouflage in this crowd, helping her blend in among the well-wishers who tried to accost her with their condolences whenever they recognized her as Ellen’s daughter.

She listened as speaker after speaker took to the podium set in front of the sea of black-draped chairs in the South London park near where her mother had grown up. They used words like “pioneering,” “inspirational,” or “loving wife and mother” to describe the late Dr. Ellen Ryder. After a while the words started to blur together, along with the speakers themselves. She could count the number of speakers she actually recognized on one hand. They were a single anonymous face in a black dress or blue-and-gold uniform.

The only people who really mattered to her were in the front row: Scott and her father, and she wasn’t even sure her father was really there. Oh, sure, he was _present_ , but not truly _there_. So it was just her and Scott. Her hand curled into a tense fist in her lap.

Same as always, really.

As if sensing her thoughts, Scott’s elbow nudged into her side. She glanced over and saw his hand lying palm up in his lap. She forced her hand to relax, placed it on his, and felt the reassuring squeeze of his gloved fingers as he curled them around her hand.

She wasn’t even sure how much longer she and her brother would be in these Alliance uniforms anymore. Since Alec’s dishonorable discharge, they’d been completely sidelined. Scott had been shuffled off to working in an office at Arcturus, and she’d been pulled from the field rotation. Officially, because of their mother’s ill health. Unofficially….

She glanced over at her father where he sat on the other side of Scott, in his high-necked black shirt and slacks. At least he’d had the good sense to wear civilian mourning clothes, with only a small N7 pin on his collar to denote his former status.

Did he know, or care, what his research had cost his children?

Shame washed over her immediately on the heels of that thought. He’d lost just about everything in trying to save his wife. Having to watch mom die slowly like that...well, maybe she would have done the same. Maybe.

Some woman was speaking now, a dark-haired dark-eyed woman who looked vaguely familiar, like from some fuzzy old holopic mom had taken before she and Scott had been born. She had introduced herself as an old colleague of mom’s from back when she’d been working on designing biotic implants for the Alliance as a civilian contractor. Scott’s hand curled around hers again, and she understood. That early research into eezo and biotics had eventually cost their mother her life. A fresh knot of grief curled into a fist in her stomach.

It wasn’t _fair_.

Who the hell were all of these people who talked like they knew her mother? Had _they_ watched her die a slow death of eezo poisoning? Seen her father slowly disgrace himself out of a prestigious military career in a desperate attempt to save her?

Her eyes flicked back to her father where he sat, stony faced and silent. Had he cried once since mom died? He looked less like a grieving widower and more like a soldier planning his next move in a military campaign. The calculating way he glanced at his omni-tool every so often sent a shiver down her spine. He’d been going to meetings almost non-stop. It had only gotten worse since mom passed. Sometimes she caught the word “Andromeda,” but that was all.

A polite round of applause for that last speaker rippled lethargically through the audience.

She and Scott were supposed to speak at some point, but she had no words, no sounds she could conjure to sum up her mother’s life. Maybe Scott would. He was always better at that kind of thing than she was. Knowing herself, she was likely to trip over her own tongue, die of embarrassment, and her brother and father would just have another funeral to plan.

Luckily, she was spared that immediate fate when another person—some Citadel diplomat friend of her mother’s—took the podium to wax poetic about how pioneeringly inspirational Ellen Ryder had been in life. After that it was a dark-skinned older man in a an Alliance captain’s uniform who studiously avoided looking at her father, and her father returned the favor by staring straight ahead, looking at the podium without actually _looking_ at it. He, too, was familiar, like she’d seen him in the vids, like she should really _know_ who he was, if she were capable of thinking straight today.

Sara stifled a sigh. This whole big funeral thing hadn’t been her idea, and it sure as hell hadn’t been Scott’s or Alec’s. She and Scott had been content to work through their grief privately, and their father carried on by seeming to pretend his wife hadn’t died at all. No, this was all the doing of her mother’s friends and colleagues who had planned and organized this event with little input from the remaining Ryders.

And somehow she’d gotten roped into participating.

Story of her life, right there.

When the captain left the podium, Scott squeezed her hand then pulled it away. She looked down and saw that he’d formed his hand into a fist, which he tapped against her leg three times.

Ah, yes. In their twenty-one years together, they’d come up with a wide variety of private signals, both verbal and non-verbal, to communicate without others intruding on them. Twin pidgin, their mother had called it. And the light tap of Scott’s fist against her leg could only mean one thing: The ancient, time-honored tradition of a rock-paper-scissors battle to see who had to go up and speak first.

She drew scissors.

He drew paper.

“Good luck,” she whispered to him as he got to his feet and straightened out his uniform.

She was next and she knew it. She could only hope she didn’t trip over her own feet on the way to the podium.

**Author's Note:**

> More flashbacks to come in future chapters!
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](http://laelior.tumblr.com).


End file.
